


Maybe We Deserve Each Other

by auroreanrave



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21907897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave
Summary: Marta becomes Benoit's Girl Friday as the festive season looms.
Relationships: Benoit Blanc/Marta Cabrera
Comments: 45
Kudos: 469





	Maybe We Deserve Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> I love Knives Out. I love watching it and reading about it and now writing fic about it. Marta is my favourite character of 2019 and giving her a fun coda where she becomes Blanc's Watson and celebrates Christmas was a joy to write. I hope you enjoy it and happy holidays!

It all starts when Marta realises one simple truth: being rich isn't everything they make it out to be.

When the dust has settled, Marta has no idea what to do with herself. She moves her mama and Alice into Harlan's mansion - her mansion, her mama chides sweetly - and busies herself with some housekeeping.

She sets up a CEO for Blood Like Wine and gives Alice a position as a reader in the company so that she can sate her love for mysteries and set up a non-profit wing of the publishing house. Marta clears out some of the rooms of the Thrombey's most ostenatious stuff and sends it off to their respective homes. Marta's mother finds a bedroom for herself and finally has nights of comfortable, uninterrupted sleep, particularly when Marta's new lawyers secure her green card status within days, and plans for citizenship are close on the horizon.

Marta doesn't speak to the rest of the Thrombreys (they're no doubt too busy fighting or plotting amongst themselves or in Linda's case divorcing her husband and visiting Ransom in jail) but she quietly pays for Great Nana's continued care and just as quietly sets up a trust fund in Meg's name to pay for her school and supplies and sends her a postcard of the Catskills with 'Make the world a better place,' in her looping handwriting. Meg doesn't reply, but that's not the point.

The beginning of November rolls around and Marta is... bored.

She can't go back to being a nurse or a carer; her name is splashed across the news, her cheery profile picture on the internet. She knows that money means that a lifetime of pressures is off her shoulders; no worrying about the water bill or the immigration authorities or of relatives of her patients accusing her of stealing because they see a kind brown girl and turn mean.

It doesn't mean she doesn't get bored though.

She reads through Harlan's books, sitting in his office and imagining his voice as he works through them with her. She hopes he is doing well, wherever he is, the wisest fool she's ever known.

It's a welcome surprise then when Benoit Blanc turns up on her doorstep and offers her a job.

"Unpaid position, technically," he says when they're in the study, the fire crackling and Harlan's Go board between them. "But I figured that a woman in your position wouldn't mind shouldering that particular burden."

"What kind of job?" Marta asks.

Blanc grins. "I saw how well you did during the investigation into Monsieur Thrombey's demise. Well, when you weren't trying to prevent me from finding out the truth."

Marta's cheeks flush briefly with shame and embarrassment and good humour because Benoit is beaming at her, as warm affection as she's ever felt. "Stop it."

"There's been a mysterious murder down in Louisiana," Blanc says, hands moving across the Go board. Black pieces against white pieces. "A wealthy playboy has been found dead. Murder of course, but no one aroud to have shot him."

"A locked room mystery?"

"The very same, Ms Carbrera."

"I'm sure you don't need me. I'm not trained."

"No better training than being on the other side of the investigation, Marta. Besides," Blanc says, leaning back in the leather armchair, "there's no one else I'd rather trust by my side."

"Than a girl who can't lie."

"Than the world's worst murderer."

Marta smiles and sets up the board for a game of Go. "Alright," she says. "I'll be your girl Friday."

* * *

The murder of Chester Maythorpe III proves to be a complex case, and Marta loves every second of it.

The Maythorpes are as bad as the Thrombeys; the Louisiana heat does nothing to warm their hearts and instead makes them prickly and mean, irascible and snappish whenever Blanc tries to interview one of Chester's relatives or his girlfriend. Marta isn't used to the heat like her mother is, like her sister likes; Marta loves the crisp autumns and cool winters of home. The Louisiana heat bakes into her in uncomfortable layers, even in early November, so warm and uncomfortable that Marta sweats for an entire week, and still she loves it all.

She and Benoit spend hours pouring over her notes, pulling from newspapers and social media accounts, sketching out the suspects. There's always coffee and doughnuts.

"I just don't see how she could have done it. Theoretically," Marta says one evening when they're several jam-filled doughnuts deep and with several suspects (Tasha, the elder sister; Jorja, the younger; Geraldo, the sexy butler). "Her brother's car explodes when she's having a massage on the other side of town. Even with some kind of remote detonator... she couldn't have done it."

"Remote detonator?" Blanc's mouth quirks into a smile.

"I watch a lot of 'Murder She Wrote'," Marta replies, swirling the end of her pen in the dregs of her hot chocolate.

"Well you're right. There's no motive anyway. She might hate her brother for being a bigot, but she's on camera for the entire hour..."

Benoit's voice trails off and in a dazzling moment of clarity, Marta sees where his brain is going. "Do we actually see her on the camera?"

Blanc's grin is bright in the dim of their rented office and he spears another doughnut with a grin. "Marta. I think we might have found our murderer."

Chester Maythorpe's murder is solved the next day, with his sister Jorja being arrested for the crime, confessing to it in the most dramatic fashion (during Jorja's synchronised swimming sessions, with the entire family present). She cries, claiming it was revenge for his cruelty, his malice, the way he threatened to out her affair with her stepfather to her mother (Marta has never been so happy to be a mere spectator to the fucked-upness of white families).

Jorja is lead away in handcuffs, her swim team bobbing in the shallows, their yellow-capped heads clustered close in gossip, and Blanc offers Marta a lemon candy from a paper bag. "Well, that's one case sorted, Friday."

Marta grins and accepts the candy. "Happy to be of assistance."

* * *

There's a couple more cases in quick succession, as the press, long since disinterested in Marta, pick up the thread of gentleman PI Benoit Blanc and his plucky assistant, advertise their services more.

There's the case of the twins found dead floating in their pool, initially ruled a murder-suicide (spoiler alert: the fashion designer uncle did it) and then the art critic that is shot dead in the middle of the opera (spoiler alert: one talented opera singer and one hell of a pair of opera glasses did it).

It's on the first week of December when Marta turns to Blanc as they walk through the verdant, manicured lawns of Northrup Manor, a picture-perfect recreation of a Regency-era stately home. "What are your Christmas plans?"

"Don't have any really. My parents are... well, dead but also complicated. Complicated and dead, Ms Carbrera. I tend to hole up in a hotel if I'm not working on a case. Treat myself to a few days' five star service."

"Oh," says Marta, hiking the edges of her skirts up a little. Their outfits are perfect copies of what rich people think Jane Austen's characters wore, and in order to investigate the murder of an Austen enthusiast, the two of them are dressed as guests and assimilating into a party.

"You? I imagine you'll be looking forward to a nice Carbrera family Christmas."

Marta nods. Her entire extended family are coming, which admittedly aren't a big bunch, but they are loud and rambunctious and it'll be nice to hear their voices, singing in Spanish and hollering in English, echoing throughout the mansion.

"I was wondering if you'd like to come. Even just for dinner or drinks or... whatever you'd like. You're family, so..."

Blanc stares at her, a little smile tugging at his lips. "I... well, alright. I would like that very much, Marta. I'll make sure to bring some of my mama's cooking. I might not be as good a cook as she, but it's nice enough."

Marta beams at him, even as Blanc turns away, heading off in the direction of a gaggle of Jane Bennets, eager to ask them about the latest death.

* * *

And then, somehow, miraculously, it's Christmas Eve.

The cases have been solved, the fires have been banked against the snow, and her mama has bought enough food to feed several armies, armed with her shiny new green card and her citizenship permanently secured. Marta and Alice have spent two full days decorating the house, and it takes Marta no small amount of pleasure in decking the halls exactly how she pleases.

Blanc arrives shortly before Christmas Eve dinner, arriving in the middle of a swarm of kids playing hide and seek. He has snow in his hair and has bags of presents for her entire family, leading him to be seized upon by the children.

"Benoit!" Marta says, swatting her cousins away playfully and hugging him. "Merry Christmas!"

"Merry tidings indeed," Blanc says, looking around and taking in her family. Carols play from the radio in the kitchen while her abuela sits on a chair, making the holiday tamales. Marta is so happy to have them all here, even as icily pointed Christmas cards from Linda and Walt sit on her mantlepiece.

Over the next four hours, Benoit makes his grandmother make tamales and is fed an obscene amount of coquito before dinner has even begun. He listens to her cousin Benito's ideas for a book and pushes him into a couple of new perspectives. He listens gamely to her two-year-old cousin Angelica's treatise on why purple is the best colour.

By the end of it all, Blanc looks full and exhausted and most of all extremely happy.

The rest of the family heads off to midnight mass, Marta opting to stay behind to clean up and prepare for Christmas Day dinner, before she sits with Benoit near the fireplace.

"They are... one heck of a good bunch your family."

Marta smiles. "They try. I'm glad to be able to see them all this year. We don't always get the chance."

"If Ransom had had his way, you wouldn't be seeing them at all," says Blanc, his expression flitting dark for a moment.

"Well that didn't happen," Marta says, resting her hand on Blanc's arm, "because you're a lousy detective and I'm a lousy murderer."

Blanc laughs at this, wrinkles crinkling at the corners of his eyes, and then he turns and kisses her. Just once, sweet and soft and inferno-hot. Chaste almost.

"I - I am so sorry," he stutters when he pulls away. Shame colours his cheeks. "I didn't - I took advan - " which is all he manages before Marta grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him back for a proper kiss.

"Oh," he says faintly. The great detective Benoit Blanc, floored by a kiss he didn't see coming from a kiss she was hoping would eventually land.

"Yes," she says, finger smoothing across the warmth of his cheek. "Oh."

Then: "I think my family think we're dating anyway."

Benoit laughs again, a chain of a chuckle that rattles his entire being. His arm goes around Marta, warm and secure. "Guess we can't disappoint 'em now, can we?"

Marta knows that there'll be adventures and complications, navigating this new change in their relationship, which has long since evolved from a chance meeting into a great partnership and one of the best friendships she's ever had. She knows there'll be risks, both professionally and personally.

But right now she's happy and warm, the sound of Benoit's content humming offset only by the gentle patter of the snow falling gently outside.


End file.
